# From Semantic To Instance: A Semi-Self-Supervised Learning Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16563 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16563/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [The Many Faces of Robustness: A Critical Analysis of Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16241/) (2020)
- [YOLOv7: Trainable bag-of-freebies sets new state-of-the-art for real-time object detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02696/) (2022)
- [Generalizing to Unseen Domains: A Survey on Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03097/) (2021)
- [Albumentations: fast and flexible image augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06839/) (2018)
- [YOLACT: Real-time Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02689/) (2019)
- [YOLOv9: Learning What You Want to Learn Using Programmable Gradient Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13616/) (2024)
- [Fast Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12156/) (2023)
- [Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Digital Pathology: Assess Zero-shot Segmentation on Whole Slide Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04155/) (2023)
- [Real-Time Flying Object Detection with YOLOv8](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09972/) (2023)
- [Semantic Segmentation using Vision Transformers: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03273/) (2023)
- [Understanding and Mitigating Annotation Bias in Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08504/) (2021)
- [Comparing YOLOv8 and Mask R-CNN for instance segmentation in complex orchard environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07935/) (2023)
- [Semi-Self-Supervised Domain Adaptation: Developing Deep Learning Models with Limited Annotated Data for Wheat Head Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07157/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Instance segmentation is essential for applications such as automated monitoring of plant health, growth, and yield. However, extensive effort is required to create large-scale datasets with pixel-level annotations of each object instance for developing instance segmentation models that restrict the use of deep learning in these areas. This challenge is more significant in images with densely packed, self-occluded objects, which are common in agriculture. To address this challenge, we propose a semi-self-supervised learning approach that requires minimal manual annotation to develop a high-performing instance segmentation model. We design GLMask, an image-mask representation for the model to focus on shape, texture, and pattern while minimizing its dependence on color features. We develop a pipeline to generate semantic segmentation and then transform it into instance-level segmentation. The proposed approach substantially outperforms the conventional instance segmentation models, establishing a state-of-the-art wheat head instance segmentation model with mAP@50 of 98.5%. Additionally, we assessed the proposed methodology on the general-purpose Microsoft COCO dataset, achieving a significant performance improvement of over 12.6% mAP@50. This highlights that the utility of our proposed approach extends beyond precision agriculture and applies to other domains, specifically those with similar data characteristics.